Hollywood stereotyping of Muslims under attack

There
is a move underway in Hollywood to attack American
film stereotypes of Muslims-and the effort is not being mounted by Muslims. The
campaign has been launched by the Writers Guild in Hollywood, in conjunction
with the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, and television producer
and political fund-raiser Haim Saban, who happens to be Jewish.

They recently hosted a panel of writers,
producers and filmmakers to discuss ways of breaking the media cycle of
negatively stereotyping Muslims.

The forum, which was called, "Rewriting the
Divide: Hollywood and the Muslim World," addressed ways in which Hollywood could
break its cycle of stereotyping. As described recently in The National,
the brand new English language daily published in Abu Dhabi, the consensus at
the forum was clear: Hollywood has been promoting stereotypes for too long, just
as previous generations of filmmakers stereotyped Italians as gangsters and
blacks as criminals. Many in the entertainment industry believe it is their
responsibility to rip apart these negative labels.

Howard Gordon, the creator and executive producer
of the television terrorist drama "24," recently changed his mind on the issue
after meeting with representatives from the Council on American Islamic
Relations (CAIR). Gordon, a recent convert on the issue, now speaks up against
media typecasting of Muslims. "Fear sells. It does," he acknowledged. "We need
to be mindful of it."

Shohreh
Aghdashloo

Gordon became aware of the problem during the
second season of "24," in 2002. The plot line focused on a suburban and
Americanized Middle Eastern family, all of whom just happened to be
terrorists-including the mom played by Iranian-American Shohreh Aghdashloo.

Fox's marketing department arranged for a giant
billboard to be erected above Los Angeles's San Diego Freeway with an image of
the family accompanied by the slogan: "They could be next door."

CAIR was so shocked it sought an immediate
meeting with Gordon and the other producers. When Gordon listened to CAIR's
concerns that the billboard-and the show-could incite violence and racial
hatred, he realized he agreed with the group. "We were acting as handmaids to
fear. The billboard came down that afternoon," Gordon said.

Maz Jobrani

That same season, Maz Jobrani-of the "Axis of
Exil" comedy group-was hired to play a character called Marko, the last
terrorist part he has played. Marko was part of a crew delivering a truck bomb,
only to have a change of heart when they see children playing at the site where
they intend to detonate their load. "They decide they don't want to do it, which
is kind of cool," Jobrani said.

Gordon's change of heart was partially due to the
fact that Arab-American actors began turning down roles in his and other shows;
he realized the pool of Middle Eastern actors was not so large in Los Angeles
that he could afford to ignore the ones who didn't want to play the role of the
typical terrorist who at some point would be required to say the too familiar
line: "In the name of Allah, I will kill you all."

Gordon said he began listening to the Middle
Eastern actors he had hired and began incorporating some of their suggestions to
make their characters less stereotypical. Gordon said he also realized it was
important to cast Middle Eastern Americans in parts where their ethnicity was
not the main factor of their role-as doctors or telephone operators or teachers.

The executive director, along with the
politically conscious film production company Participant Media, which made
"Syriana" and "The Kite Runner," have now joined together in an effort to
persuade writers, directors and other producers in Hollywood to stop feeding
stereotypes about Middle Easterners and Muslims.

The idea of the forum was to promote a series of
dialogues with writers at which experts on various aspects of Middle Eastern
culture could explain Islam and how day-to-day life evolves in Egypt or Syria.
Several participants, however, took issue with the fact that the problem was
identified as being about Islam rather than a broader East-West divide. Nicole
Pano, a Palestinian-American actress, pointed out that many Arabs like her are
Christian. Others, on the other hand, commented that many light-skinned
Americans-including one of the panelists-are Muslims and don't necessarily
suffer from the stereotyping.

Everyone at the forum agreed, however, that the
ignorance of American audiences about Middle Eastern culture was both
disturbing. Dalia Mogahed, a researcher with the Gallup polling organization who
wrote the book entitled, "Who Speaks for Islam?" said that when she asked
Muslims around the world what they most admired about the United States, they
generally pointed to the country's political freedoms and its technological
savvy-two things they would like more of for themselves. But when she asked
Americans what they most admired about the Muslim world, their two most common
answers were "nothing" and "I don't know."

Many analysts say the stereotyping is not the
fault of Hollywood and instead point to the American news media for propagating
stereotypes. But others say the average American film or television viewer is
exposed to relentless labeling and negative images of Middle Eastern or Muslim
people.

The plot of the 2006 film "American Dreamz," for
example, which recently aired on HBO, centers on a television talent show and on
two members of the same Arab family who end up competing to participate. One of
them "naturally" turns out to be a terrorist who only wants to get on the show
so he can kill a fictional U.S. president who has decided the best way to
increase his declining popularity ratings is to appear as a guest judge.

According to Jack Shaheen, a Lebanese-American
university professor who has made a career of cataloging Middle Eastern
stereotypes in books like "Reel Bad Arabs" and his latest, "Guilty," told The
National that "American Dreamz" was actually pretty tame compared with some
of other films.

A striking point about the casting of "American
Dreamz" was that only one member of the Arab family at the heart of the plot was
played by an actual Arab, the Lebanese-American Tony Yalda. The other Arabs were
mostly played by Iranians.

Shaheen saw several possible reasons for this
sort of casting; either Arab-Americans didn't want to play these roles, the
producers weren't interested in casting Arabs-someone with brown skin was good
enough-or, said Shaheen, "Producers and directors may want to avoid
Arab-American actors to avoid alerting the community that the film contains
damaging stereotypes."

Those stereotypes have now become so pronounced
that some Arab-American performers are now being told they don't look Arab
enough. "They want ugly. They want us to play terrorists, and terrorists are
ugly," said Pano, the Palestinian-American actress.

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